[Reader-list] For The American South: a Waning Hold on National Politics

[Paul Miller]

This is an interesting article about the whole racial politics of the  
election. One of the more interesting things for me, as a film maker,  
is that the old Confederate States are changing - education and multi- 
culturalism are eroding the ignorant "gun toting, religious fanatic"  
type that one usually associates with the American South. This will  
change America's foreign, military, and social policies. Thank  
whatever divinities you believe in for the demise of the old South!  
Bobby Jindal is a born again Catholic conservative from a Hindu  
background! He's thinking of running for president now in 2012...
Paul

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/us/politics/11south.html?ref=us

For South, a Waning Hold on National Politics


By ADAM NOSSITER
Published: November 10, 2008

VERNON, Ala. — Fear of the politician with the unusual name and look  
did not end with last Tuesday’s vote in this rural red swatch where  
buck heads and rifles hang on the wall. This corner of the Deep South  
still resonates with negative feelings about the race of President- 
elect Barack Obama.

What may have ended on Election Day, though, is the centrality of the  
South to national politics. By voting so emphatically for Senator John  
McCain over Mr. Obama — supporting him in some areas in even greater  
numbers than they did President Bush — voters from Texas to South  
Carolina and Kentucky may have marginalized their region for some time  
to come, political experts say.

The region’s absence from Mr. Obama’s winning formula means it “is  
becoming distinctly less important,” said Wayne Parent, a political  
scientist at Louisiana State University. “The South has moved from  
being the center of the political universe to being an outside player  
in presidential politics.”

One reason for that is that the South is no longer a solid voting  
bloc. Along the Atlantic Coast, parts of the “suburban South,” notably  
Virginia and North Carolina, made history last week in breaking from  
their Confederate past and supporting Mr. Obama. Those states have  
experienced an influx of better educated and more prosperous voters in  
recent years, pointing them in a different political direction than  
states farther west, like Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and  
Mississippi, and Appalachian sections of Kentucky and Tennessee.

Southern counties that voted more heavily Republican this year than in  
2004 tended to be poorer, less educated and whiter, a statistical  
analysis by The New York Times shows. Mr. Obama won in only 44  
counties in the Appalachian belt, a stretch of 410 counties that runs  
from New York to Mississippi. Many of those counties, rural and  
isolated, have been less exposed to the diversity, educational  
achievement and economic progress experienced by more prosperous areas.

The increased turnout in the South’s so-called Black Belt, or old  
plantation-country counties, was visible in the results, but it  
generally could not make up for the solid white support for Mr.  
McCain. Alabama, for example, experienced a heavy black turnout and  
voted slightly more Democratic than in 2004, but the state over all  
gave 60 percent of its vote to Mr. McCain. (Arkansas, however, doubled  
the margin of victory it gave to the Republican over 2004.)

Less than a third of Southern whites voted for Mr. Obama, compared  
with 43 percent of whites nationally. By leaving the mainstream so  
decisively, the Deep South and Appalachia will no longer be able to  
dictate that winning Democrats have Southern accents or adhere to  
conservative policies on issues like welfare and tax policy, experts  
say.

That could spell the end of the so-called Southern strategy, the  
doctrine that took shape under President Richard M. Nixon in which  
national elections were won by co-opting Southern whites on racial  
issues. And the Southernization of American politics — which reached  
its apogee in the 1990s when many Congressional leaders and President  
Bill Clinton were from the South — appears to have ended.

“I think that’s absolutely over,” said Thomas Schaller, a political  
scientist who argued prophetically that the Democrats could win  
national elections without the South.

The Republicans, meanwhile, have “become a Southernized party,” said  
Mr. Schaller, who teaches at the University of Maryland, Baltimore  
County. “They have completely marginalized themselves to a mostly  
regional party,” he said, pointing out that nearly half of the current  
Republican House delegation is now Southern.

Merle Black, an expert on the region’s politics at Emory University in  
Atlanta, said the Republican Party went too far in appealing to the  
South, alienating voters elsewhere.

“They’ve maxed out on the South,” he said, which has “limited their  
appeal in the rest of the country.”

Even the Democrats made use of the Southern strategy, as the party’s  
two presidents in the last 40 years, Jimmy Carter and Mr. Clinton,  
were Southerners whose presence on the ticket served to assuage  
regional anxieties. Mr. Obama has now proved it is no longer necessary  
to include a Southerner on the national ticket — to quiet racial  
fears, for example — in order to win, in the view of analysts.

Several Southern states, including Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee,  
have voted for the winner in presidential elections for decades. No  
more. And Mr. Obama’s race appears to have been the critical deciding  
factor in pushing ever greater numbers of white Southerners away from  
the Democrats.

Here in Alabama, where Mr. McCain won 60.4 percent of the vote in his  
best Southern showing, he had the support of nearly 9 in 10 whites,  
according to exit polls, a figure comparable to other Southern states.  
Alabama analysts pointed to the persistence of traditional white  
Southern attitudes on race as the deciding factor in Mr. McCain’s  
strong margin. Mr. Obama won in Jefferson County, which includes the  
city of Birmingham, and in the Black Belt, but he made few inroads  
elsewhere.

“Race continues to play a major role in the state,” said Glenn  
Feldman, a historian at the University of Alabama, Birmingham.  
“Alabama, unfortunately, continues to remain shackled to the bonds of  
yesterday.”

David Bositis, senior political analyst at the Joint Center for  
Political and Economic Studies, pointed out that the 18 percent share  
of whites that voted for Senator John Kerry in 2004 was almost cut in  
half for Mr. Obama.

“There’s no other explanation than race,” he said. In Arkansas, which  
had among the nation’s largest concentration of counties increasing  
their support for the Republican candidate over the 2004 vote,  
“there’s a clear indication that racial conservatism was a component  
of that shift away from the Democrat,” said Jay Barth, a political  
scientist in the state.

Race was a strong subtext in post-election conversations across the  
socioeconomic spectrum here in Vernon, the small, struggling seat of  
Lamar County on the Mississippi border.

One white woman said she feared that blacks would now become more  
“aggressive,” while another volunteered that she was bothered by the  
idea of a black man “over me” in the White House.

Mr. McCain won 76 percent of the county’s vote, about five percentage  
points more than Mr. Bush did, because “a lot more people came out,  
hoping to keep Obama out,” Joey Franks, a construction worker, said in  
the parking lot of the Shop and Save.

Mr. Franks, who voted for Mr. McCain, said he believed that “over 50  
percent voted against Obama for racial reasons,” adding that in his  
own case race mattered “a little bit. That’s in my mind.”

Many people made it clear that they were deeply apprehensive about Mr.  
Obama, though some said they were hoping for the best.

“I think any time you have someone elected president of the United  
States with a Muslim name, whether they are white or black, there are  
some very unsettling things,” George W. Newman, a director at a local  
bank and the former owner of a trucking business, said over lunch at  
Yellow Creek Fish and Steak.

Don Dollar, the administrative assistant at City Hall, said bitterly  
that anyone not upset with Mr. Obama’s victory should seek religious  
forgiveness.

“This is a community that’s supposed to be filled with a bunch of  
Christian folks,” he said. “If they’re not disappointed, they need to  
be at the altar.”

Customers of Bill Pennington, a barber whose downtown shop is  
decorated with hunting and fishing trophies, were “scared because they  
heard he had a Muslim background,” Mr. Pennington said over the  
country music on the radio. “Over and over again I heard that.”

Mr. Obama remains an unknown quantity in this corner of the South, and  
there are deep worries about the changes he will bring.

“I am concerned,” Gail McDaniel, who owns a cosmetics business, said  
in the parking lot of the Shop and Save. “The abortion thing bothers  
me. Same-sex marriage.”

“I think there are going to be outbreaks from blacks,” she added.  
“From where I’m from, this is going to give them the right to be more  
aggressive.”